The Power of Political Optimism

/by

There is a difference between optimism and naïveté. In politics today, optimism offers conservatives an inexhaustible source of infectious power that can overcome and shatter the foundations of the establishment’s fear-based version of “populism.” Indeed it is naïve to think any other approach has a chance.

Optimism has insurrectionary power because it contradicts everything the American establishment now trains voters to accept. From uniparty conformists and their corporate, academic, and media allies who package and spread the messages, to deep state agencies and plutocrats who decide on the messages, there is a common theme: pessimism. And when pessimism impels us to believe in worst-case scenarios, panic follows close behind.

What else might explain every rote proclamation that the world is coming to an end because of the climate crisis? What else explains why millions of American children are coping with mental illness, suicidal thoughts, and hopelessness for the future? They’ve been convinced the earth is on the brink of burning up. What else accounts for educated adults utterly convinced that the planet may soon be uninhabitable? What else lends apocalyptic context to every report—a staple now part of all reporting on hurricanes, floods, or winter storms?

It isn’t merely the end of our planetary biosphere that has turned half the nation into compliant defeatists. Along with the climate emergency we have a health emergency that even now finds millions of Americans afraid to congregate, afraid to take off their masks, afraid to get a job or go to school.

The currency of establishment politics in America relies on pessimism. What other word better characterizes the incessant claim that white Americans are by definition racist, that America is an inherently racist nation, and that BIPOC individuals (for the blissfully uninitiated, that’s black, indigenous, and people of color) cannot possibly hope to succeed without government edicts and entitlements to compensate for the pervasive discrimination inflicted on them by privileged white people?

The power of political optimism is that it rejects all of this. Burning fossil fuel is not going to immolate the biosphere. Forests are not disappearing. We can protect wildlife and wilderness, while also remaining realistic about what sort of a human footprint is necessary to power civilization. Diseases and pandemics will strike, and with courage we can balance the risks, protect the weak, preserve our freedom, and exercise reasonable precautions as we build herd immunity and move from pandemic to endemic. We can methodically develop vaccines and treatments, but don’t need to compel people to take them. As for racism, only vestiges remain, as Americans have built the most inviting and inclusive culture in human history.

That is optimism. It is powerful because it challenges the establishment narrative at its roots. In 21st century America, optimism is subversive. Flaunt it. Deny the doomsayers their moment. Reject the pessimistic essence of everything they’re saying. Starting there, we have a chance.

Staying Optimistic Despite Current Events

Anyone taking a hard look at what has happened to this country over the past 50 years can make the case that optimism is naïve and futile. American culture has been under unrelenting attack. The values that made America great have been undermined if not lost. The traditional family, with children raised by a father and a mother, is now denigrated as a vestige of the oppressive patriarchy. A work ethic, once considered the first prerequisite for success, is being systematically destroyed by the rhetoric of “equity.” A united nation, which for centuries had embraced the process of ethnic assimilation, in recent decades has been fractured not merely by massive new waves of immigration, but by a new message of division. For the first time in history, immigrants are not encouraged to work and assimilate, but rather to resent as racist the people who built the nation they’ve entered, and to fight to destroy it. Even the concept of what it is to be a man or a woman is questioned by the institutions we once trusted.

In recent years, unforgettable moments exemplify how far we’ve fallen as a nation. The heartbreaking images of howling mobs toppling statues of American heroes. The historic St. John’s Church came within an eyelash of turning into a pile of ashes, as rioters assaulted the White House, nearly breaking through the fence. Rampaging mobs spent the summer of 2020 spreading a defiant message as they smashed and looted downtowns across the nation: Stop resisting, elect our candidate, or we will burn this whole country to the ground. Major cities, now more than ever, are taken over by tens of thousands of predators, psychopaths, and addicts who are stealing, screaming, shitting, and shooting up in ruined public spaces that once were magnificent examples of a brilliant civilization.

These depredations to our nation and culture just scratch the surface. But the madness that inspires them is fertilized by pessimism. An optimist would never condemn the traditional family, the value of a work ethic, the promise of assimilation, or the immutability of biological sex. An optimist doesn’t believe our cities must be ceded to disorder, or that compelling addicts to sober up is an inhumane and futile act. An optimist does not think that life is fundamentally unfair, or that life on planet earth is about to end because we’ve reached a catastrophic climate “tipping point.”

This is the transgressive, revolutionary power of optimism. Not only does it unequivocally reject the fear-based premises of America’s establishment uniparty, but it can inform a comprehensive worldview that sees a bright future for America and for humanity.

In every aspect of global challenges there are optimistic scenarios. Perhaps the biggest premise of the currently prevailing political establishment in America is that globally, we are running out of resources and civilization as we know it is unsustainable. Here and abroad, this deeply pessimistic assertion is used as the moral justification for unprecedented assaults on every aspect of our lives—from freedom of movement, to the retention of middle-class wealth and survival of small businesses, all the way to basic property rights and national sovereignty. Yet this premise is a deeply flawed and hopelessly pessimistic, agenda-driven distortion of reality.

And it is easily debunked.

Choosing a Better Future

Adequate water is often cited as the looming and inevitable Malthusian check on humanity achieving universal prosperity, but technology already exists to recycle urban wastewater, desalinate seawater, engineer interbasin transfers from water-rich regions to water-poor regions, and more efficiently harvest storm runoff. Apart from mustering the political will to undertake these projects, the energy required to pump and treat water is considered by some to be the most prohibitive obstacle. But pessimism over securing adequate energy resources also rests on dubious premises.

To begin with, conventional energy is not in short supply. Proven reserves of so-called fossil fuels, at double the current rate of consumption, are sufficient to last about another 160 years. “Unproven” reserves of natural gas, oil, and coal, are estimated to be many times that. Energy abundance can also be achieved with advanced nuclear fission, or nuclear fusion, factory-produced biofuels, or through improving photovoltaic technologies, satellite solar power stations, or even direct synthesis of CO2 exhaust into liquid fuel. Energy scarcity is a political choice, not an unyielding reality.

While hard limits do exist on some of the most essential mineral resources, there are also tantalizing new workarounds and innovations to compensate for scarcity. Most metals can be recycled, and even complex systems like batteries will be cost-effectively recycled once robotic technologies dramatically lower reprocessing costs. One of the most promising alternative building materials is cross-laminated timber, a mature technology that is now available to replace concrete panels and steel trusses, and is already used as the primary structural building material in high-rise buildings around the world.

Perpetual human innovation, whether it’s cross-laminated timber, or next-generation concrete using abundant desert sand, or, for low-rise buildings, structural blocks with cores of hemp or straw, or virtually inexhaustible new minerals mined from the moon and asteroids will ensure that when the political and economic environment favors innovation, the collective lot of humanity will get better and better.

Optimism is the prerequisite for everything good—the motivation and freedom to innovate, the courage to coexist in peace, the character to work hard and accept meritocracy, the vitality to stay healthy and sober, the judgment to balance the needs of the environment with the needs of humanity, the faith to believe in a bright future, the charisma to attract others to a joyful movement, and the enduring conviction that we will overcome this rapidly descending tyranny.

Pessimism, on the other hand, catalyzes fear, panic, despair, and desperate fanaticism. Pessimism provides the fertile soil into which manipulative agendas are planted, sowing guilt, resentment, hatred, and the dark comfort of extremist solutions to manufactured problems. Pessimism and the products of pessimism are the body on which evil festers and grows.

Practicing optimism, and professing optimistic perspectives on political challenges is the furthest thing from being naïve. Optimism is a weapon, a talisman, capable of recruiting and realigning the American people to obliterate every diabolical schema and evil scheme that currently threatens their nation. Make it the foundation of your politics, and wield it with recognition of its power. And enjoy every minute.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

Will “The California Promise” Become a Movement?

/by

According to Joe Garofoli, senior political writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, “The California Promise,” announced by Assembly Republicans on October 5, is “short on Trumpisms, but also on innovative policy ideas.”

There’s a lot to unpack in that remark. Very few Republican politicians in California will openly say what most Republican voters in California believe, which is that despite his imperfections as a politician and peccadillos as a man, Donald Trump’s policies are mostly sound.

Until Republican politicians are willing to walk that tightrope, Garofoli’s words present a fatal paradox. How can you promote meaningful solutions that match the scale of California’s problems, if every solution you offer is either “Trumpian,” because Trump would avidly support it, or tepid, because only tepid solutions escape Trump’s endorsement?

After all, it was Trump who was willing to remind America that climate change hysteria, and the attendant fascist transitions being imposed to combat the alleged crisis, is based on what remains a theory filled with holes. It was Trump who suggested we thin the forests the way they do in Scandinavia, and was mocked for his supposed stupidity. Pick any big idea full of common sense that will stop the Democratic machine that feeds on failure, and Trump probably said it.

But even if Trump hasn’t gone on the record to say we need to bring back the timber industry if we’re serious about stopping forest fires, or that denying the sale of advanced hybrid cars by 2035 is short-sighted and draconian, or that we must retain SAT scores as the primary criteria for college admissions, or that we should resume drilling for oil and gas in California, or that parents should be able to choose what school they’re going to send their children to, these are things that Trump would say if you asked him, and therefore they are toxic, racist, climate denying, dangerous sentiments, dead on arrival in this enlightened state.

Staying therefore well within the pale, California’s Republican Members of the Assembly and Assembly candidates cooked up an impressive list of policy recommendations, the details of which can be found here. They address six categories: cost of living, safety, education, homelessness, water supply, and fire safety. In each category, actual legislation has been submitted by one or more Assemblymen. But the sad reality is with rare exceptions, if any, these bills will die in committee.

If these proposals are doomed, a few questions are pertinent going forward. First, would they make things better for Californians if all of them were passed by the legislature and signed by the governor? The answer to that is unequivocally yes, even though there is much more that can be done. Which brings up a logical follow up question, which is if these relatively moderate solutions are nonetheless symbolic, what assortment of solutions would be more likely to excite enough voters to flip the legislature and politically realign the state?

To be fair, and from taking a close look at the proposals that constitute The California Promise, that’s a tough question. It’s easy enough to say the biggest problem with gasoline prices isn’t the gas tax, it’s the regulations that have constricted the supply of gasoline, which dramatically raised prices, so therefore prioritize deregulation and worry about the gas tax later. Why save $0.50 per gallon with a gas tax holiday, when you can save $2.00 a gallon with deregulation? What’s not easy, however, is to endure the blowback from the entire environmentalist/refinery industrial complex. The environmentalists want no gas. The refiners want super expensive gas. Thread that needle.

Assemblyman Gallagher’s solution to homelessness, regional shelters, is the only thing that’s going to get them off the streets. But notwithstanding the mortal threat such a solution presents to the homeless industrial complex, and the allegations it invites that Gallagher wants to build concentration camps, any solution of this sort would have to impose a per-bed cost ceiling. Otherwise the leeches that have already squandered billions will just adapt to find a new and equally profitable way to perpetuate the scam and prevent resolution.

At the risk of being churlish, if not heretical, proposing tax cuts isn’t a realistic solution as the state is about to descend into another round of deficit budgets. The solution is to propose spending cuts. Easier said than done, but that’s the territory that needs to be thoroughly explored. Per capita general fund spending in California, adjusting for both inflation and population growth, has doubled in just the last ten years. Where is all that money going? Find out what happened, and scream bloody murder.

The California Promise has good ideas on public safety. Restoring pre-Prop. 47 felonies might even be something the GOP can sell to the majority Democrats. Similar potential may exist with some of their education proposals, especially Assemblyman Hoover’s proposal to expand vocational education programs. With vocational jobs now often paying more than jobs requiring college degrees, and a serious shortage of skilled workers, this proposal is a winner.

One would think proposals to increase California’s water supply would earn bipartisan support, but they don’t. If they did, the state would spend funds already allocated to, for example, start construction on the badly needed Sites Reservoir. Nonetheless, some of Assemblyman Devin Mathis and Vince Fong’s proposals might have a chance. Streamlining the permit and review process, codifying the goal – set by Newsom himself – of achieving another 3.7 million acre feet of storage capacity by 2030, and expediting judicial review of anti-water project lawsuits are all reforms that most Democrats know are necessary. That may or may not translate into support when it comes to a floor vote.

As for fire safety, a proposal to subsidize a restoration of California’s biomass power capacity will not hurt. Biomass power is baseload power, unlike most othe renewables, and it doesn’t cost any more than the fully loaded cost for solar or wind energy. So why not? As for the proposal to increase wildfire emissions reporting, that’s a nice in-your-face reminder to the climate change zealots as to where most of the CO2 is coming from, but it won’t help the forests, and it won’t stop the zealots. A better proposal, probably futile, would be to bring back California’s timber industry, which harvests less than one quarter what it harvested in the 1990s. If you want to prevent wildfires, you have to thin the tinderbox. It’s that simple.

But the real question is what happens next? Did The California Promise come and go? What is the future of this project? Was it a press conference, a splash page, and a gummed together amalgamation of legislative proposals that GOP Assemblymen were going to submit anyway, or is it something more?

As a movement, The California Promise has potential. It can morph and evolve, cohering into a comprehensive alternative for voters, earning the support of all GOP politicians and offering a platform for all GOP candidates. Whether it veers into Trumpian territory or not, it will earn the enmity of Democrats and their captive press. But with unity and a commitment to solutions, it can make the difference if it becomes a perennial effort and not a one-time stunt. To get to that next level requires investment and leadership. Is the California GOP prepared to do that?

This article originally appeared in Epoch Times.

How One Candidate Beat the Odds in the One Party State of California

/by

Anyone who thinks it is impossible for Republicans in California to regain relevance has not studied the campaign, and improbable victory, of Josh Hoover. The odds were against Hoover, who ran against a seasoned incumbent Democrat, five term Assemblyman Ken Cooley. The redrawn 7th District, with 38 percent registered Democrats versus 32 percent Republicans, favored Cooley. To make matters much more challenging, Cooley’s campaign spent $4.8 million compared to Hoover’s $1.7 million.

Hoover won by 1,383 votes, less than one percent, and how he did it is a case study in how California’s Republican candidates can win despite having far less money and a registration disadvantage. Reached by phone earlier this week, Hoover said that while there were a lot of factors in the race that came into play, the most obvious explanation for his victory was that he simply outworked his opponent in making direct contact with individual voters. The Hoover campaign mustered far more people to send texts, make phone calls, and walk door to door.

Cooley, by contrast, during the final month was spending over $250,000 per week on television and radio ads. Throughout the campaign Cooley was mass mailing expensive campaign flyers. Cooley’s campaign relied on mudslinging, like so many do, but it may have backfired on him. When a household has received over dozen flyers attacking Josh Hoover as a Trumpian misogynistic book burning extremist, they’re taken aback when they meet the candidate and realize he’s not a monster at all, but a genuine, humble, reasonable, thoughtful person who cares about the people living in his district.

As Hoover put it, “Cooley never attacked me on anything I ever did, he created generic talking points on why Republicans are bad and tried to paint them over who I am. It didn’t resonate because it wasn’t believable.” No. It wasn’t. Not when the target of the unfounded attacks has walked precincts, knocked on thousands of doors, and met voters face to face.

Hoover, who along with hundreds of volunteers, knocked on over 40,000 doors during his campaign, didn’t have the funds to match Cooley punch for punch on the air. Instead he put campaign resources into calling every grassroots activist organization in the region that would support him, and recruited volunteers. His campaign staffers called every potential source of volunteers not once, but every week throughout the summer and fall. If any organizations, such as the county GOP, provided Hoover their volunteer list, then every person on that list was called regularly. It worked. During the final weekends of the campaign, Cooley had at most 50 people in the field. By contrast, throughout the late summer and through the first weekend in November, Hoover was consistently sending over 100 people out to walk precincts.

Not only did Hoover’s team recruit volunteers from the county GOP office, from GOP legislative staffers, from local tax fighting groups, and other activist groups, but he also set up internship programs at the local colleges and high schools, where scores of additional teenagers and young adults were recruited to engage in direct voter contact.

Along with prioritizing putting limited resources into building up a bigger ground game than his opponent, Hoover focused on a positive message. When forced to respond to negative ads that were attacking him as a bad person, Hoover’s flyers instead attacked Cooley on his record and his actions. But Hoover’s primary message, consistently expressed in direct voter contacts, was that he cared about the same issues as his voters – quality education, public safety, homelessness, the cost of living.

When Cooley made a late pivot to claim he would clean up the homeless encampments along the American River, it was easy for Hoover to respond. After all, Cooley has been in the state legislature for ten years, and the situation has not improved.

There were some factors helping Hoover that may or may not be replicable in other districts. The new 7th district incorporates a lot of walkable suburbs, making it easier for a volunteer to knock on hundreds of doors in a single day. The redistricting cut away some of Cooley’s reliable blue communities and replaced them with Fair Oaks (purple), and Orangevale (red). Even in Folsom, also added to the 7th District and mostly blue, Cooley was starting from scratch and had no advantages of incumbency.

There may have been complacency in Cooley’s campaign, but until Republicans start winning more races, Democratic complacency may benefit any Republican trying to beat the odds. When asked repeatedly how he won, Hoover was consistent, “we knew from the beginning we would not leave anything on the field,” he said, “no stone unturned in regards to volunteer effort and ground game. We invested in talking to voters directly, and made sure we had a message that speaks to voters with kitchen table issues rather than a partisan message. Our message was that we care about the people in our community and we want to put forward solutions.”

In California, Every Voter is Fair Game

Another key strategy Hoover adopted from the start was to consider every voter fair game. In a strategy that informed both their message and how they prioritized which households and neighborhoods to send door knockers, they set a goal to attract 10 percent of registered Democrats, plus all no-party-preference voters.

There is a subtle but important difference between the registration landscape based on which party has more registered voters, versus one based on how many voters are not in the opposition party. This comparison is useful in California since registered Democrats greatly outnumber registered Republicans. The first chart, below, is sorted from registration data on all 80 Assembly Districts. It shows the twenty districts in the California Assembly that have the highest values when subtracting the percent Democrat registration from the percent Republican registration. The percentage difference shows in column one (RvD gap). This is a traditional way of evaluating a candidate’s chances.As can be seen on the above chart, the 18 Republicans that won this November all did so in the districts where Republicans have the strongest registration. That would include, however, six victorious Republicans (names italicized) that won in districts where there were more registered Democrats than Republicans. Juan Alanis, in the 22nd District, was able to prevail despite a 7.72 percent registration disadvantage. But maybe, in this era of widespread and growing bipartisan dissatisfaction with failing Democratic policies, the registration advantage or deficit isn’t the only way to view a Republican candidate’s prospects.

The next chart, below, presents the same data, but this time sorted by column two, which calculates the percentage of registrants in each district that are not registered as either Democrats, Greens, or the Peace and Freedom parties (“Non DGP”). Sorted this way, the roster doesn’t shake out much differently, but the approach this represents is the future. Every voter is in play, and for targeting and messaging, the prevailing question is how many voters have proclaimed themselves to be either liberal or progressive, and how many have not.

This second chart reflects Hoover’s strategy. The results are interesting on both charts. They show that in all 12 districts where there was a GOP advantage, the GOP candidate won, and that in six cases, Republican candidates won in districts where there was a Democrat advantage. Republicans should study the tactics of all six candidates who beat the metrics, i.e., had negative GOP percentages and high absolute numbers of Democrat voters – they are Devon Mathis (33), Laurie Davies (74), Tri Ta (70), Josh Hoover (7), Greg Wallis (47) and Juan Alanis (22).

If six Republican Assembly candidates could beat the odds this time, what if next time every Republican Assembly candidate emulated Hoover’s strategy, aspiring to attract every independent or Republican voter, along with 10 percent of the Democratic (or Green or P&F) voters? Were all of them to fully succeed in this objective, then two years from now, Republicans would control 71 seats in the Assembly. Strategists may pick their number, and ratchet that goal down to whatever reality they’re comfortable with. But this is not fantasy.

Democrats are destroying California. Most voters have figured that out, and are waiting for politicians to step up with solutions. Registered Republican voters constitute a super-minority in California, but Republican candidates can still win if they stick to the issues that concern everyone, and make their case on the ground. Josh Hoover proved it.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

How Local Taxpayers Involuntarily Fund Left Wing Groups

/by

Earlier this month a San Diego based group “The Transparency Foundation” released a fifty page report documenting widespread use of taxpayer funds to support “lobbying, issue advocacy, and political activities.”

Entitled “Follow the Money: San Diego County,” the report alleges “extensive coordination between government agencies and these Left-wing groups for both funding and policy development, with no apparent control on their lobbying and political activities.” The report claims the funds are being made available through government contracts and grants, as well as through “in-kind use of government staffing resources under the guise of membership on ‘advisory’ working groups.”

In a series of detailed exhibits, the report focuses on ten “so-called non-profit, non-partisan groups,” Alliance San Diego, Center on Policy Initiatives, Environmental Health Coalition, Mid-City Community Advocacy Network, PANA, Youth Will, San Diego Pride, Sand Diego LGBT Community Center, San Diego Organizing Project, and Climate Action Campaign. The report alleges these organizations each have engaged in some or all of the following activities: Targeted get-out-the-vote efforts, and lobbying for partisan political agendas, including expansion of government welfare, union mandates, tax increases, defunding the police, government subsidized mass transit, government subsidized housing projects, expanding rights for illegal immigrants, rent control, “Green New Deal” environmental regulations such as a mandate to force homeowners to retrofit their homes to eliminate natural gas appliances, and more.

The nine month investigation documented over $6.6 million in taxpayer funds diverted to these ten organizations in San Diego County during just one fiscal year 2020-21. But this is probably a small fraction of the total. The authors explain that the $6.6 million only represents “the amounts of contracts and grants directly verified by our investigation.” Significant diversions of funds to the ten organizations the investigation focused on may not have been discovered, as well diversions of public funds to other organizations that are not among the ten that were investigated. Also not included in these figures is “whatever share of over $100 million in statewide Covid-19 funding for ‘community-based organizations’ that was routed through several foundations and private health contractors.”

The chairman of The Transparency Foundation,” Carl DeMaio, in an email, said “outright non-compliance by local government agencies on our public records requests lengthened the time it took to produce the report.” This noncompliance was noted in the report, where they state “Given the opacity of local government financial reports and the difficulty our investigation encountered in getting several local San Diego County government agencies to comply with our requests under the California Public Records Act (CPRA), we believe the total amount of taxpayer funding going to Left-Wing groups in San Diego County is substantially higher than what this report captures.”

Using public funds to support partisan political activities is illegal, but illegality is difficult to prove when the parties involved refuse to respond to CPRA requests, and because there is significant grey area when interpreting what constitutes partisan political activity. While some actions appear to have been blatantly partisan, others may be explained away by public officials as fulfilling a nonpartisan obligation to provide public information, public education, or public services. But other findings in the investigation are equally troubling.

Quoting from the report, “Our investigation failed to find any contracts or grants awarded during 2021-2022 by Republican-controlled city councils or school boards in San Diego County to groups that could be considered conservative, let alone groups engaging in lobbying, issue advocacy, or political activity. In fact, conservative organizations that filed 990s and operate primarily in San Diego County did not have government funding streams — either because they refuse to accept government funding or no government agency considers them for funding. In stark contrast, our investigation found significant funding being provided by Democrat-controlled city councils and school boards to Left-wing groups.”

Another key finding was that left-wing organizations in San Diego County operate in a highly integrated manner. For example, they worked together to target specific communities with “civic engagement” and “get-out-the-vote” where the result of their targeted efforts would benefit Democratic candidates in local elections. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with nonprofits working together to address various challenges in a specific community. Depending on the nature of their nonprofit charter, there also may not be anything wrong with them pursuing partisan objectives. What’s wrong is if their activities are funded by taxpayers, or, as the investigation claims, some of these groups failed to register as lobbyists, or failed to report campaign contributions.

The investigation goes on to enumerate additional findings, many of which appear to explicitly violate laws governing nonprofits and campaign finance, and many as well which if not explicitly illegal, are unethical insofar as they violate the reasonable expectation that government agencies, which are funded by all taxpayers, should not support partisan political activity that is only supported by one partisan fraction of all taxpayers. To clarify these points of law and to further the investigation they started, The Transparency Foundation concluded their report with five recommendations:

(1) Ban government agencies from supporting political groups, (2) compel government agencies to provide complete information on their diversion of funds to political groups, (3) convene a San Diego County Grand Jury to investigate the use of taxpayer funds by groups that engage in lobbying, issue advocacy and political activity, (4) convene a Congressional committee to conduct an oversight hearing on the misappropriation of Covid-19 funds using San Diego County as a case study with follow up by the Inspectors General of federal agencies that were involved, and (5) have the California State Auditor investigate which organizations received over $100 million in statewide Covid-19 funds and what were the deliverables and results associated with the funding.

What The Transparency Foundation has done in San Diego County exposes what is likely a systemic and perennial process in California at large. It is another example of how the cards are unfairly stacked in favor of Democrats in this one-party state. If any of the many policies implemented by Democrats were not worsening failures, it might be possible for some people to condone this corruption. As it is, every Californian, no matter what their party affiliation, should realize that what is marketed as enlightened politics has become a political machine, serving only itself.

This investigation, and its recommendations, should set a precedent for reform minded activists to follow in every city and county in California.

This article originally appeared in Epoch Times.

The “Reparations” Scam

/by

California is considering paying “reparations” to black Californians who are directly descended from enslaved people, which may surprise most Californians. After all, slavery was never legal in the Golden State.

Governor Gavin Newsom, heedless of the fiasco he’s inviting, formed a “Reparations Task Force,” no doubt with his future presidential aspirations in mind. The task force issued an interim report in June, detailing California’s “historyof slavery and racism and recommending ways the Legislature might begin a process of redress for Black Californians, including proposals to offer housing grants, free tuition, and to raise the minimum wage.”

To understand how slavery is applicable to California, one must sift through the report’s 500 pages of convoluted logic common to the victim industry in America. According to the report:

“In 1883, the Supreme Court interpreted the 13th Amendment as empowering Congress ‘to pass all laws necessary and proper for abolishing all badges and incidents of slavery in the United States.’ However, throughout the rest of American history, instead of abolishing the ‘badges and incidents of slavery,’ the United States federal, state and local governments, including California, perpetuated and created new iterations of these ‘badges and incidents.’ The resulting harms have been innumerable and have snowballed over generations. Today, 160 years after the abolition of slavery, its badges and incidents remain embedded in the political, legal, health, financial, educational, cultural, environmental, social, and economic systems of the United States of America. Racist, false, and harmful stereotypes created to support slavery continue to physically and mentally harm African Americans today.”

In other words, the task force is not recommending reparations for slavery, but rather for discrimination.

And how do task force members recommend California pay for its mistakes?

The task force’s preliminary findings identify a “housing wealth gap” and recommend granting $223,239 to every black Californian who is descended from slaves, at a cost to California taxpayers of $501 billion.

But this doesn’t take into account possible additional reparations for “unpaid prison labor and years of lost income [while in prison],“ or “disproportionate health outcomes,” including shorter life expectancies which the group’s economic consultants estimated to be worth $127,226 per year. And this is not a complete list of the “injustices” and “harms” the task force is considering.

Practical suggestions from the task force as to how reparations might be implemented will have to wait until at least June 2023. More “racial and financial data” needs to be gathered from the state’s Department of Justice to “make more accurate calculations.” But, along with “a formal apology,” the task force has preliminarily recommended cash payments, free college tuition, and zero-interest housing loans.

The phony sanctimony attendant to the professional grifters peddling this nonsense is breathtaking.

In predictably fawning coverage by the Los Angeles Times, the vice chairman of the state “task force” charged with coming up with reparation ideas said “the process came down to three ‘A’s’—admitting the problems of the past; atoning for them by identifying appropriate reparations; and acting on that information in a unified way to make sure state legislators, who would finalize a program, follow through and get the work done.”

Certainly, one of those three “A’s”—admitting the problems of the past—is healthy enough. There has been racism and discrimination in America’s past, just as there has been racism and discrimination in the past of every nation. Any decent person with a sense of history should acknowledge the past and abhor racist or discriminatory behavior. It’s the “atone” and “act” parts of the three “A’s,” however, where problems surface. Big problems.

For starters, if California is offering reparations for racial discrimination, why not offer them to every group that ever suffered discrimination based on their race or ethnicity throughout California’s history? Why not Hispanics or Native Americans? What about the Chinese workers who built much of California’s early infrastructure, or the descendants of Japanese Americans living in California who had their assets confiscated and were relocated to internment camps during World War II?

One might argue black citizens were victims of more discrimination than Native Americans, Hispanics, or Asians, but as any serious student of California history knows, that would not be an easy argument to make.

The biggest problem with “reparations” for black Californians is that we’ve already tried it, through the state’s welfare system that has caused significant damage to black families. How does welfare help the black community or the black family, if, as conservative Larry Elder puts it, “you have replaced the father with a welfare check”?

Thanks to welfare and other entitlements that made a black male breadwinner unnecessary, over 70 percent of black babies are born to unwed mothers. Multiple generations of alienated black men have grown up in homes without a strong male role model and have turned to gangs, drugs, and crime. Today, black men are overrepresented in every category of crime in America, and welfare, i.e., reparations, are the reason why.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that proponents of reparations are in denial of this basic truth: When you take away the incentive for people to work and support their families, you foment chaos in families and communities.

Activists who demand reparations ignore these truths because they are part of what we may as well dub the “antiracism industrial complex.” Like every parasitic coalition of special interests that benefit by exploiting the cause of those groups they’re supposedly trying to help, this is a profitable con.

So far, whenever reparations have been tried to atone for racism and discrimination—not just welfare, but affirmative action—they have proven counterproductive. The welfare state fostered by the Great Society programs of the 1960s contributed massively to government dependency and black student underachievement. Affirmative action has undermined the immutable standards necessary for a society to thrive as a competitive meritocracy.

The consequences of affirmative action are as damaging to black communities as welfare is. The evolution of affirmative action into “equity” where proportional representation by race and ethnicity is demanded in everything—hiring, promotions, admissions, contracts, and even household wealth—is a mortal threat to the social and economic health of America. And both affirmative action and “equity” provide cover for the one place left in California where systemic racism still exists: the failing public schools in disadvantaged black neighborhoods.

If the task force really wanted to do something to help the black community, it would start with improving California’s K-12 public schools and addressing the failure of politicians beholden to the teachers’ unions to enact any real education reform. The task force recommendations include adopting a “K-12 Black Studies curriculum that introduces students to concepts of race and racial identity.” But nowhere to be found is any call to action for California’s schools to be held accountable for the fact that 84 percent of black students did not meet grade-level math standards on the state’s student assessment tests this year.

Anyone believing a handout of a half-trillion or more to 2.2 million black Californians is going to improve race relations is delusional. But it will ultimately be harmful to blacks themselves. Nobody ever felt better about their lives, or improved their lives, by getting something for nothing.

The reality for blacks in America today is that if they are willing to work hard, study to acquire marketable job skills, and reject the woke narrative that only puts a chip on the shoulders of all who ascribe to it, they have opportunities that equal if not exceed those of anyone else.

Unfortunately, you will never hear that hard and helpful truth expressed by anyone participating on the Reparations Task Force, or anyone else whose career may depend on denying it.

There is no chance that California’s reparations task force’s scheme can be carried out equitably, nor any possibility it will do anything but cause harm to race relations and the black community. This is what Gavin Newsom is flirting with. But as it lurches forward, with Newsom’s fingerprints all over it, it may help him win an early 2024 primary in a Southern state. Perhaps that’s all that matters.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

Election Results Here at Last; California’s GOP Still in Decline

/by

On December 16, nearly 40 days after the November mid-term elections, California’s Secretary of State finally released the “Statement of Vote.” This document is the official and final record of the winners and losers. What is belatedly certain is what we knew all along. California’s GOP did not arrest the catastrophic slide that defines its performance so far in the 21st century.

Before covering what by any objective standard was a dismal performance overall, it is appropriate to highlight a few bright spots. California’s GOP delegation to the U.S. Congress increased from 11 members to 12, although the real turnaround, or perhaps “mini-turnaround” is more apt, was in 2020 when the GOP’s congressional caucus representing California had bounced back up to 11 from the rock-bottom 7 members that had survived the 2018 election.

With the single uptick logged this November, these 12 Republicans represent 23 percent of California’s 52 member Congressional delegation.

Notable in the GOP’s incremental gain this year was the victory of John Duarte, a newcomer to politics who in a fight for an open seat edged out the formidable Adam Gray, a moderate Democrat who had already served five terms in the state assembly. In a bruising fight, Duarte edged Gray by 564 votes in the 13th District, where 43 percent of voters are registered Democrats, versus only 28 percent registered Republicans.

Gaining one seat in the U.S. Congress was the one welcome bit of contradictory data in what was otherwise a complete downward slide. The GOP remained excluded from all eight higher offices, where the margins of victory for the Democratic candidates were ridiculous – Governor 59.2%, Lt. Governor 59.7%, Secretary of State 60.1%, Controller 55.3%, Treasurer 58.8%, Attorney General 59.1%, Insurance Commissioner 59.9%, and Superintendent of Public Instruction 63.7%.

In the State Assembly, where all 80 seats were up for grabs, the GOP minority shrank from 19 seats to 18 seats, and in the Senate, where 40 seats were contested, the GOP minority shrank from 9 seats to 8 seats. It really can’t get much worse. The GOP controls 23 percent of the seats in the Assembly, and a mere 20 percent of the seats in the Senate. California is a one party state.

To put this unrelenting century-to-date GOP slide into context, in 2000 the GOP held 30 seats in the State Assembly, 14 seats in the State Senate, and 20 seats in the U.S. Congress. That’s still pretty bad, but if, for example, you hold 14 seats in the 40 seat State Senate, and 30 seats in the Assembly, your minorities are 35 percent and 38 percent, respectively. This means that in 2000, in both houses of the state legislature, the Republicans could prevent the Democrats from exercising the prerogatives of a two-thirds majority. Today, the GOP isn’t even within striking distance of regaining a one-third share of seats. They would have to gain 9 seats in the Assembly and 5 seats in the Senate.

If the entire story of the last two decades weren’t steady decline, picking up enough seats to acquire a one-third share in both houses might seem more likely, but another trend belies much hope. The GOP’s share of registered voters also shows a perfect record of step-by-step decline. From 35 percent in 2000 to 34 percent by 2006, then down to 31 percent in 2008, dropping to 29 percent in 2012, 28 percent in 2014, 26 percent in 2016, and since then plateaued at 24 percent. Less than one in four registered voters in California are Republicans.

One might see good news insofar as at a glance, at least 24 percent roughly mirrors the share of seats California’s Republicans occupy in the state legislature and the U.S. Congress, but that misses what is perhaps the most discouraging fact of all; Democratic candidates are securing the support of the vast majority of independent voters in the state. Democrats represent a commanding 47 percent of registered voters, but the other 29 percent are independents. In most races, for every independent voter a Republican attracts, the Democrats are attracting two or three.

The story gets even worse when taking into account the growth in the absolute number of California’s registered voters this century. In 2000, there were 15.7 million registered voters, and 5.4 million were Republicans. In 2022, the total number of registered voters had swelled to 21.9 million, and – get ready – 5.2 million were Republicans. The quantity of registered Republicans in California has declined over the past twenty years, while at the same time, the Democrats increased their registrants by over 3 million, from 7.1 million in 2000 to 10.3 million in 2022.

The failure of California’s Republican party, according to apologists for its slide into oblivion, is attributable to everything except their own leadership and management. The impossible stigma of Trump. The lingering stain of Prop. 187 all the way back in 1994, approved by voters, that denied state funded healthcare to illegal immigrants except in emergency cases. The unforgivable sin of Prop. 8, approved as well by voters in 2008, which banned gay marriage. Ever since these propositions were supported, mostly by Republicans, the GOP has been mercilessly portrayed by every Democrat, every liberal educator, and every major media property as both racist and homophobic. It has worked. A generation over voters have come of age since 2000, thoroughly indoctrinated to despise Republicans.

Excuses abound. Democrats in California now wield a political machine funded by public sector unions and abetted by every wealthy individual and powerful institution in the state, including major corporations ran by directors that would be out of their minds to challenge the narrative. This machine, this political juggernaut, has now seized upon climate change, a woman’s right to choose, and, of course, gender politics in all of its bizarre permutations, as further examples of Republican barbarism.

Topping off all these excuses for failure is the demographic trope. More than ever, California is now a minority-majority state, and minorities don’t vote Republican. Between 2000 and 2020, Hispanics increased from 32 percent of the state’s total population to 39 percent, while non-Hispanic whites dropped from 40 percent to 35 percent. Asians went from 11 percent up to 15 percent, and African Americans dropped marginally from 6 percent to 5 percent.

This is all daunting and sounds convincing, particularly when it is being recited by people whose jobs depend on making the case that they confront impossible circumstances that are beyond their control. But it’s old news. And for anyone serious about bringing vitality back to the California GOP, it’s irrelevant. The failures of the Democrats in every metric that matters to voters is a fact that supersedes all of the California GOP’s supposedly disqualifying history or demographic headwinds, all stereotypes and fearmongering, all indoctrination, and all the money and professional messaging the machine can muster.

In public education, transportation, water, energy, housing, homelessness, crime, forest management, cost-of-living, high taxes, and – coming soon – another round of budget deficits, the Democrats have made a mess. That levels the playing field. Republicans will start winning again when they have the courage to promote solutions that match the scale of the problems. That will not arise from the brainy recesses of well heeled consultancies and tepid focus groups. It will arise from new leaders who aren’t afraid to challenge fundamental premises and offer uncompromising alternatives.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

Reforming the California Environmental Quality Act

/by

Environmentalism became a national priority in the 1970s, and not a moment too soon. In California, for example, the legendary smog of the Los Angeles Basin was matched by barely breathable air in the Santa Clara Valley up north, the entire southern end of the San Francisco Bay was on track to be filled in to build homes and industrial parks, and the magnificent California Condor was about to go extinct. On land, over water, and in the air, the footprint of civilization was stomping away, heedless of its environmental impact. Something had to be done.

In parallel with a national response, in 1970 the California State Legislature passed the CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. Initially requiring the government to consider and mitigate the environmental impact of public projects, in 1972 CEQA was amended to include any private project that required a permit from a public agency.

Today CEQA has become a monster. If a public agency determines a project will have a “significant” effect on the environment, it will require an Environmental Impact Report, or “EIR,” to be prepared. The original guidelines for an EIR were ten pages. Today, the checklist consumes 489 pages. Needless to say there are legions of environmental professionals available to consult with project developers to prepare these EIRs. And the complexity and ambiguity of the standards required to determine what constitutes “significant environmental impact,” along with a similar lack of clarity over what constitutes appropriate mitigation, makes successfully preparing an EIR extremely expensive and time consuming.

If the bureaucratic process weren’t enough, typically requiring involvement by multiple government agencies (one of which is designated the lead agency), the CEQA process for any significant project is almost always mired in litigation. It is common for opponents to file a lawsuit to either force a developer to prepare an EIR even if the lead agency deemed that unnecessary, or to challenge the findings in an EIR. If one lawsuit is settled, there is nothing preventing successive lawsuits on different grounds by other parties.

Criticism of CEQA has become of bipartisan concern in California. Various ways to reform CEQA are being proposed. The most common reform is to increase the number of projects that are exempt from CEQA. The flaw in this approach should be obvious: it takes an act of the state legislature to define exempt categories, and meanwhile, CEQA continues to stall badly needed housing and infrastructure projects that don’t meet the favored criteria.

Another proposed reform is to attempt to clarify what remain CEQA’s “extensive and unclear requirements.” Even “CEQA professionals” admit they are uncertain about requirements that even they find inconsistent, flexible, vague, confusing, and subjective. To address this, some reform proposals have recommended adding more specific language to CEQA. That, however, is something that might define CEQA’s evolution over the past 52 years. And the more verbiage that has been added to the statute and it guidelines, the more territory has been created in which to search for ambiguity. That translates into even longer EIRs, and even more pretexts for lawsuits.

One interesting proposal is to categorically exclude any project that already meets regional planning guidelines. Conceptually this makes a lot of sense, since CEQA is applied per project, which fails to take into account the regional context in which any residential, commercial, industrial, or infrastructure development may be situated. By granting “ministerial” approval, i.e., by automatically waiving the CEQA process if a project conforms to regional planning guidelines, the development process can escape the current gridlock. The problem, of course, is the possibility that the statewide mandates pursuant to CEQA are ignored by a particular county or regional planning authority, thus circumventing original purpose.

None of these proposed reforms are likely tame the monster that CEQA has become. Carve-outs leave the monster largely intact. It is impossible to create additional clarity on something as intrinsically complex as the environmental impact of construction projects. And while there is probably room for some useful reforms in terms of integrating the CEQA process with regional planning objectives, that probably won’t offer relief to every project proponent that deserves relief.

So how can California preserve CEQA as a meaningful check on environmentally irresponsible development, while taking away its ability to be used as a crude bludgeon by which litigants and bureaucrats can deny projects a fair and expedited process?

In 2017, a guest column in the Los Angeles Times by Ron De Arakal, who at the time served on the Costa Mesa Planning Commission, proposed five CEQA reforms. His work remains one of the best available summaries of additional reform suggestions that deserve serious legislative consideration. To paraphrase from Arakal’s work:

(1) Put an end to the interminable, costly legal process by disallowing serial, duplicative lawsuits challenging projects that have completed the CEQA process, have been previously litigated and have fulfilled any mitigation orders.

(2) Require all entities that file CEQA lawsuits to fully disclose their identities and their environmental or, increasingly, non-environmental interest.

(3) California law already sets goals of wrapping up CEQA lawsuits — including appeals — in nine months, but other court rules still leave room for procedural gamesmanship that push CEQA proceedings past a year and beyond. Without harming the ability of all sides to prepare their cases, those delaying tactics could be outlawed.

(4) Judges can toss out an entire project based on a few deficiencies in environmental impact report. Add restraints to the law to make fix-it remedies the norm, not the exception.

(5) The losing party in most California civil actions pays the tab for court costs and attorney’s fees, but that’s not always the case with CEQA lawsuits. Those who bring CEQA actions should pay the prevailing party’s attorney’s fees.

There’s more. In an attempt, unsuccessful, to qualify a ballot initiative for the November 2022 ballot that would have funded water projects, the proponents included a CEQA reform that applies Arakal’s recommendation #3. It is startling in its simplicity. To summarize, it read, “any challenge to an eligible project is to be resolved (e.g., decided by a court) within 270 days after the certified administrative record is filed with the court.”

Imagine that. Housing developments and other badly needed projects getting approved and breaking ground in under one year, instead of taking decades. Everyone agrees California needs CEQA reform. Let’s hope the reforms are universally applied, and have teeth.

This article originally appeared in Epoch Times.

The Wasteland of Leftist Compassion

/by

Compassion is one of the greatest of human virtues. But effective compassion comes with an obligation to do more than merely what feels good and sounds good. Public policies motivated by compassion must also take into account the full complexity of the challenge, the unintended consequences, the reality of human nature, and strike a balance between what is desired and what is possible. Often the most beneficial expressions of compassion seem tough and punitive, yet are the ones that offer more lasting and comprehensive solutions. Without taking a balanced and holistic approach to compassion, public policy is hijacked by special interests who reap perpetual profit from working on a problem that never goes away. For them, ineffective compassion is good business. But it leaves behind a wasteland.

In American politics, if envy and resentment are the currency of the Left, driving their attacks on privilege and their demands for equity, then compassion is the gold that backs that currency. Emotional appeals to voters and politicians to display compassion are the means by which the Left claims the moral high ground. And in those appeals, and the misguided policies that result, entire industries are created. Industries populated by individuals whose careers depend on perpetuating the fraud.

In many cases, the consequences of unbalanced compassion is obvious, as anyone can see if they visit the coastal cities of California. It was compassion that motivated state legislators to decriminalize hard drug addiction, now dubbed “substance use disorder.” Compassion was the moral justification to empty California’s prisons, and downgrade property and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. Compassion compelled politicians and judges to rewrite laws that kept mentally ill people safely off the streets.

Compassion was the bludgeon that beat down objections to the disastrous “housing first” rule, which denies funding for drug treatment or job training until free housing – with no conditions for entry – are provided to homeless people. And “compassion” pressured local and state authorities to forego inexpensive shelters in favor of more “equitable” apartment complexes, brand new and located in expensive neighborhoods, at a cost of over a half-million per unit.

None of this is compassionate, of course. The result of these failed policies are hundreds of thousands of homeless Americans, prey for criminals, desperate for drugs, many of them psychotic, waiting for free housing that costs so much only a few get built. They wait, untreated, unaccountable, dying on the streets. The cities they’ve overran have been financially ruined, as billions are squandered on compassion-driven policies that merely make the problems of crime and homelessness worse, and entire neighborhoods have become unsanitary and unsafe.

Destroying Rural Landscapes and Livelihoods

Misguided compassion isn’t limited to a few blue cities, however. It has been weaponized to destroy rural America as well, and again, California provides the cautionary example. Through manipulative appeals to compassion for wildlife and trees, politicians have been pressured into regulating California’s annual timber harvest down to less than one quarter what it was as recently as the 1990s. At the same time, and for similar compassionate reasons, Californians have become extremely adept at preventing and extinguishing wildfires, while making it nearly impossible to do controlled burns, mechanical thinning of undergrowth, or graze livestock in the forests.

Here again, the consequences of compassion are devastating. California’s forests are tinderboxes, with trees that are on average at least five times as dense as they’ve been for millennia, along with overgrown underbrush that small, natural fires used to keep in check. When superfires rage through these forests, wreaking a level of destruction with no precedent in history, don’t blame climate change. Blame misguided compassion, causing policy decisions that had precisely the opposite impact from what was intended.

Compassion ran amok is also at work in California’s rivers. The reason native Salmon remain endangered has little to do with dams and reservoirs blocking their passage to spawning grounds. Every year, nine fish hatcheries operated by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, along with a few more operated by federal agencies, harvest salmon eggs and hatch millions of salmon fry. Once they get big enough the young salmon are released into the rivers where they are promptly eaten by striped bass, a voracious nonnative species. But striped bass also require compassion.

This is misguided compassion at its worst. It is a no-win scenario. Instead of declaring open season on striped bass, whereby anglers would quickly reduce their population to levels no longer constituting a genocidal threat to salmon, or accepting the demise of the salmon, wildlife biologists in California are exploring ways to redesign and micromanage riparian environments to facilitate salmon and bass living together. Altering aquatic vegetation, and carefully timing stream and river volume and temperature, are ways the biologists are attempting this compassionate ecological compromise. Unsurprisingly, it’s not working. But it has created a lot of jobs.

In the meantime, and despite decades of failure, the compassionate strategy is to require more water to run through California’s rivers during storms, and of the water that remains in reservoir storage, releases are timed to increase river flow and lower river temperature. One may wonder how this affects California’s farmers. That’s a good question. Farms are being systematically eliminated, as millions of acres of irrigated farmland come out of production to save the salmon.

Inviting Lawless Anarchy – Nowhere is Exempt

The worst compassionate overreach of all can be found in the story of what’s happening in California’s far north, where cartels have taken over most of the drug industry. A recent interview on California Insider with investigative reporter Jorge Ventura, “How Cartels Successfully Take Over Northern California,” offered a troubling peek into what’s happening in California’s far north. It should come as no surprise that international drug cartels, with billion dollar budgets and armies of hired killers, can overwhelm the resources of rural police and sheriff departments. But it is nonetheless surprising to see it happening in one of the most pristine corners of America.

In the name of compassion, the international border with Mexico has been thrown wide open, making it easy for cartels to import workers – dubbed “trimmigrants” because they’re put to work trimming marijuana buds. Mexican and Chinese gangs have set up operations in California’s northernmost counties, as well as Laotians. The Laotian story offers yet another twist on out-of-control compassion, because their leaders have cleverly purchased land on which to grow marijuana, since illegal cultivation on private land is now compassionately recategorized as a misdemeanor in California, whereas illegal grows on public land such as national forest land remain a felony.

These Laotian gangs have brought with them thousands of workers, and have illegally subdivided private parcels to house them. They have engaged in multiple title transfers to make it difficult to track down the property owners to enforce zoning regulations and code violations. These tactics, again, overwhelm the resources of a rural county’s code enforcement department, which may only employ one or two people. And when one county attempted to stop the gangs from illegally transporting water to irrigate their marijuana plants, the Laotians alleged the water was for their community, accused the county of racism, and with the help of a high priced San Francisco based attorney, got the charges dismissed.

In California’s far north, there is no end in sight. Compassionate environmentalists deny water to law-abiding farmers, while drug gangs steal it. These gangs include people of color, so compassion demands forbearance. Compassion for wildlife and trees prevents ranching or logging, depopulating the region of its productive ranchers and loggers, and even driving out the legal marijuana farmers. But illicit operations thrive. A recent comment by the inimitable character Beth on the series Yellowstone says it all: “They want the land. That’s all you have to understand.”

The environmentalist movement has been taken over as well by special interests who want the land. Once the cartels have driven out the productive residents of California’s far north, they’ll deal with the cartels. If that is an accurate portrayal of what is happening, this level of cynicism is treasonous. But what else explains the failure of state and federal authorities to end this anarchy?

Compassionate policies are meaningless or harmful if they aren’t validated by results and accountability. There are compassionate solutions to homelessness, just as there are compassionate solutions to wildlife management. But they require hard choices and they require compassion for everyone. There are the homeless, but also there are all those people who live and work among the homeless whose taxes pay for homeless programs. There are the animals and fishes, but also there are loggers and ranchers and farmers, and millions of people who rely on them.

Compassion is not compassion when it is manipulated to fulfill a corporate socialist agenda of turning America’s cities into high-tech pens for human livestock and depopulating rural areas. Every law, and every expenditure, promoted in the name of “compassion” must first be evaluated in this context. There are humane solutions to the challenges of housing, there are realistic solutions to environmental challenges. Finding them is hard, selling them to voters is even harder. But that is what true compassion requires.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

These Projects Can Solve the Water Crisis and Protect Farms

/by

Despite seasonal rainfall at normal levels so far this year, the California Department of Water Resources on Dec. 1 announced an initial State Water Project allocation of 5% of requested supplies for 2023. Unless heavy rains or new policies change this decision, it will mark the third consecutive year that the State Water Project delivered only 5% to its customers.

This is an avoidable problem. By the end of December 2021, for example, only three months into the water year, two massive storm systems had already dumped more than 104 million acre-feet onto California’s watersheds. Almost none of it was captured by reservoirs or diverted into aquifers.

For nearly 40 years, the political consensus in California has been to cope with droughts by increasing conservation mandates. During that time, the state’s population has increased from 24 million to nearly 40 million, and farm production has increased in virtually every category. But due to conservation, agricultural water use has been constant, averaging about 34 million acre-feet per year.

Several factors are breaking this model despite a 40-year history of alleged success. Replacing flood irrigation with drip irrigation was a short-term solution. Flood irrigation in the fields downstream from the Sierra mimicked annual flooding prior to the construction of dams and levees—and replenished the aquifers.

Increased environmental requirements for less water diversion from rivers for agriculture have forced additional groundwater pumping at the same time as those aquifers were no longer being replenished by flood irrigation. As depleted aquifers collapse and percolation is no longer possible, the soil dies.

California policymakers have decided to prioritize river flow to protect salmon and other native fish, even though invasive striped bass have now been identified as a major cause of salmon losses. Those flow policies, combined with destruction of aquifers thanks to drip irrigation and a failure to construct any new facilities to capture more storm runoff have left Californians unable to cope with droughts.

Until a new consensus is reached on water policy, draconian rationing is the only option. Expect millions of acres of fallowed or ruined farmland and cities devoid of outdoor landscaping.

There is an alternative. Here are some water projects that ought to be moving forward in California:

• Build desalination at scale: Desalination has the unique virtue of being an inexhaustible supply of fresh water. But so far, there is only one major desalination plant in California, located just north of San Diego. The $1 billion Carlsbad Desalination Plant went into operation in 2015 and desalinates 56,000 acre-feet of water per year, enough to serve 400,000 people.

• Build off-stream reservoirs: The virtue of off-stream reservoirs is they are constructed in arid valleys and won’t disrupt the flow of natural rivers with a high dam. Instead, flood runoff is pumped into them during storm events.The largest proposed project, the $4 billion Sites Reservoir north of Sacramento, would store 1.5 million acre-feet. Its annual yield could irrigate more than 150,000 acres of farmland.

• Build wastewater recycling projects: The proposed Carson plant in Los Angeles County is planned to recycle 168,000 acre-feet of wastewater per year at a projected construction cost of $3.4 billion. This, however, is just a fraction of the total available wastewater stream in the Los Angeles Basin. If all urban wastewater in California were recycled, it would add an estimated 2.0 million acre-feet per year to the water supply, as well as improve the health of aquatic ecosystems.

• Support environmentally friendly Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta diversions to San Joaquin Valley aquifers: The draft “Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley” proposes constructing channels inside delta islands where fresh water could be safely taken from perforated pipes beneath a gravel bed during periods of excess storm runoff, while at the same time continuing to provide fresh water in the Delta necessary for farming.

The Blueprint also proposes a new $500 million central canal in the San Joaquin Valley to transport water from the pipes in the delta to underground storage. Aquifer storage capacity in the San Joaquin Valley is conservatively estimated at 50 million acre-feet. Groundwater supplies could be greatly enhanced from this canal, which would include connections to Friant-Kern and Delta-Mendota canals and the California Aqueduct, as well as facilities to recharge and recover water from the aquifers.

These four project categories have the potential to eliminate water scarcity in California forever. If Californians are destined to endure decade-long droughts with minimal snow and only a few big storms each year, these projects will ensure that sufficient water is harvested and stored to keep cities and farmland healthy and green.

This commentary originally appeared in Ag Alert, a publication of the California Farm Bureau.

Increased Supply Lowers Prices More Than Gas Tax Repeal

/by

California Assemblyman James Gallagher is one of the architects of The California Promise, a six point set of political priorities unveiled by the state’s Republican Party in October. First among these is “An Affordable California,” and first in that category is “Repeal Gas Tax.”

To emphasize this priority even further, on the top of the Assemblyman Gallagher’s home page a counter has been installed, showing how long it’s been “Since Newsom & Democrats Promised Gas Tax Relief.” As of this moment on the afternoon of December 8, that’s 274 days, 19 hours, 25 minutes, and 15 seconds.”

It would be great to have a gas tax holiday in California. It is a regressive tax that adds, per gallon, 54 cents in state excise tax, 23 cents for California’s cap-and-trade program, 18 cents for the state’s low-carbon fuel program, 2 cents for underground gas storage fees, plus state and local sales taxes. Altogether this equals, not including another 18.4 cents in federal excise tax, and give or take a few cents depending on local sales tax rates, $1.20 to the price of every gallon of gasoline you buy.

Nonetheless it is a mistake to put so much emphasis on a gas tax repeal. At a time when California’s much vaunted budget surplus has suddenly morphed into an estimated deficit of at least $25 billion in the next fiscal year, what was already a hard sell becomes impossible. Try to stop taxes from going up even further. For now, that will do.

Meanwhile, instead of focusing on eliminating taxes, why not focus on lowering the cost of goods that are being taxed?

For example, in 2017, when state gas taxes and fees already amounted to nearly $1.00 per gallon, you could purchase gasoline in Los Angeles for $2.86 per gallon. In 2015, gasoline prices were down as low as $2.58 per gallon in California. Instead of repealing the “gas tax,” which even if repealed would only apply to the state excise tax of $.54 cents per gallon, and would not take away the rest – the cap-and-trade fee, the low-carbon fee, the underground storage fee, or the sales taxes – why not focus on increasing production and thus increasing competition? Wouldn’t that lower prices?

Put another way, if lowering the cost-of-living, starting with gasoline, is a priority, why not fix the economic conditions that have in only five years accounted for over $2.50 per gallon of increased cost per gallon to the consumer, instead of the gas tax, which at best might take $.54 cents out of the cost per gallon?

Even more to the point, if this is all symbolic posturing on the part of the California GOP, which it most certainly is, and if the purpose for all this posturing is to expose the elitist disregard California’s Democrats have for normal hardworking Californians, then why not advance broader principles that voters, everywhere, might not only connect to why their gas is so expensive, but to why everything is so expensive?

California is not unaffordable because taxes are too high. The high taxes, and they are too high, only add insult to injury. The economic factors breaking Californians, however, are that Democrats have regulated the economy to a standstill, creating scarcity and driving up costs.

The real reason housing is unaffordable in California, to cite an example even more painful than the cost of gasoline, is because of California’s neglected water, energy, and transportation infrastructure, its decimated timber industry, its offshoring of the sources for every necessary building material, its punitive policies of urban containment, its protracted, capricious, and extortionate process to obtain building permits, and its ridiculously overwrought building codes.

All of this was engineered by Democrats. Unaffordable housing, along with unaffordable gasoline, is the result of political choices made in a one-party, Democrat ruled state. That is the message Gallagher and his fellow republicans need to send to voters.

California, of all states, is literally floating atop stupendous reserves of oil and gas. In the 1980s, California field production of crude oil per day stood at over 1.0 million barrels. Today, production is down to 330 thousand barrels per day. This despite the fact that onshore and offshore reserves of oil in California total an estimated 15 billion barrels. If there is any place on earth where these resources could be responsibly extracted, it’s here in California. But instead we send jobs and dollars to petro-dictatorships around the world.

There’s no good reason for this. In 2021, foreign suppliers accounted for 56 percent of the oil refined in California. The entire energy strategy of California’s state legislature is flawed. Simply mandating a phase in of increasingly advanced hybrid vehicles could allow the state to maintain its desired downward trend in oil consumption. This would take pressure off the state’s utilities to double production of electricity – something they have absolutely no idea how to accomplish while conforming to “renewables” mandates.

California’s Republican state legislators, who as of 2023 will account for a mere 27 out of 120 seats, cannot possibly expect to push through legislation opposed by Democrats. But they do have an opportunity to make a lot of noise, and they have very little to lose. They should be demanding, if anything, that California’s refineries apply their windfall profits to increasing capacity. They should be demanding and defining policies that will offer a roadmap to energy companies once again drilling here in California for more oil and gas. When supply rises, prices fall.

Publicly challenging fundamental premises of the Democrats, starting with their faith-based, utterly irrational belief that we can precipitously eliminate consumption of oil and gas, should be the mission of Republicans in Sacramento. GOP politicians should be openly defying the absurd premises that Democrats pass off as gospel, instead of trying to creatively navigate within their parameters.

At the same time, California’s GOP politicians should be espousing the principle of competition through deregulation as the only way to make California affordable again, because that’s the unassailable truth. Lowering one tax, temporarily, merely invites accusations – not entirely unfounded – of indifference to deficits. Lower spending, then lower taxes. But since you can’t do either, shout louder, hit harder, and aim for the heart, not the hair.

This article originally appeared in Epoch Times.